The Fire of Knowledge – Part Two

“The difference between a good life and a bad life
is how well you walk through the fire.”
(Carl Jung)

Thiruvila “Fire-walking”. Sri Veerama Kaliamman Devasthanam Temple. 
Gelugor, Penang. MALAYSIA – 9 August 2019

 

Let's talk about our dear Fire again.

After seeing how its symbolism has been associated with knowledge, thanks to the Greco-Roman myths, and the studies of cultural anthropology, I want to focus now on two completely opposite rituals but which close the circle (of fire).

 

Leaving Prometheus, let's move on to India.

Obviously Hinduism also held fire as a deity in the highest regard, with the name of Agni, the common Sanskrit root of the original Latin etymology for fire – ignis – then replaced by the more common term focus, which was instead the “fireside” .

Let's go back to Hinduism.

Agni, the god-fire, is not only one of the main deities, but as written in the First Book of the Ṛg Veda, he is also one of the names by which the sages call the real: it is the principle of nutrition contained in the sphere of existence of the “Earth” Prithvi.

Be that as it may, along with Indra, the King of the gods, Agni is one of the most important and revered deities of the Vedic period, to whom about 200 hymns of the Ṛg Veda are dedicated.

One of its main characteristics is that, as a fiery element, Agni is present simultaneously in the celestial sphere (the sun), in the atmospheric one (lightning) and in the terrestrial one (in the appearance of the two wooden sticks of the sami tree, called araṇi). And it is precisely in this last form that he is known as man's best friend, since thanks to the production of the sacred fire that the faithful are able to feed the deities and receive favors from them.

 

Agni, the fire-god.

 

“Agni had, in other words, that mediating and catalyzing function capable, on the one hand of consuming the offerings in the name of the divinities, and on the other hand, of transmitting the ritual merits to men who performed the sacrificial ritual well.” Diego Manzi writes in his beautiful book on the divinities of India.

Fire is therefore mediation with the divine world and a way of catharsis for the elimination of one's sins – as we have seen previously also for Christian Purgatory and Islamic ablution.

Even Sita, in the Rāmāyaṇa, has to face the test of Agni to prove her purity.

As a last peculiarity, which will then be useful as a bridge for one of the festivals I want to tell you about, is that Agni is often fragmented into ten declinations, five natural such as fires, lightning and volcanoes and five rituals: the fire produced by the rubbing of sticks during the sacrifice, that of the progenitors, of the home, that of the ancestors and finally the crematorium that puts an end to existence.

Let us remember this detail of the ancestors.

 

It now becomes palpable how fire is experienced as a gateway between the human and the divine.

Prometheus steals fire from the gods to give it to men.

Now men, through the fire, honor and pray to the gods.

I was able to visually experience this in Malaysia, where the Hindu presence is very strong and completely different from that of Rome.

While the later are mostly from the common area of West Bengal, Indian and Bangladeshi, of the Hare Krishna genre, the Hindus who are in Malaysia, and in the city of Penang where I lived, come from the southern area of Tamil Nadu, with a type of completely different and more extreme rituals, as I have already told you about the Thaipusam.

Well, a festival that impressed me a lot was the one called Thiruvila or Thimithi (Kundam in Tamil) or the “Fire-walking” ceremony which is celebrated a week before Deepavali, during the month of Aipassi (October or November).

The custom of performing rituals that include fire, such as walking on hot embers (in Greek: pyrobasia) is present in many peoples.

In this case, the Hindu faithful do it in honor of the goddess Draputi Amman, considered the incarnation of the goddess Mariamman.

 

The festival begins with a long barefoot walk with chariots and oxen, with in front of the priest who has carried out this ritual in several years, people tell me during the walk, and to whom the faithful on the side of the road and from the houses go to pay milk dyed yellow (the color of many Tamil Hindu rituals) at his feet out of respect: milk is considered capable of washing away human sins and is always offered to the deities.

The priest who leads the procession will be the first to walk on the hot embers, with the karakattam, the “sacred water-filled pot”, on his head. He will make this walk several times, and after him every faithful willing to demonstrate the same devotion and courage, even boys, women and men with small children in their arms. Many of them will fail in pain.

There are not a few cases, it is said, in which the faithful have suffered wounds and burns and have also fallen into embers, but this is part of the ritual and causes trance euphoria more than physical pain.

 

When I attended this ritual I was not yet able to fully understand its value, or rather, I know well how fire has a profound meaning and how sacrifice and pain are vehicles of faith, if not of religious fanaticism; but after having deepened the powerful link between divinity, human beings and fire, from Prometheus or Agni up to the present day, it becomes clearer that everything is a wheel that turns incessantly.

And how a balance is necessary whereby the fire, which from the divine sphere becomes material and allows men to be safe and get culture, must then return to the divinities, bringing with it the prayers and sacrifices of human beings.

The scares and wounds of the flames on the feet are nothing but prayers made of sore flesh.

Fire becomes mediation between human and divine through wound, pain and courage.

The list of festivals that move in this same direction of pain, blood and prayer is long, go and see the images of the 9 Emperor Gods Festival in Thailand, the Muslim Ashura in India, the Vattienti of Southern Italy or the flagellants of the Holy Friday in the Philippines.

Let's not forget that Prometheus, as a punishment for stealing fire from Zeus, was punished by chained to a rock with an eagle that tore his chest and rip his liver.

So, in this case, fire is the dimensional gateway from earth to the divine and higher celestial sphere.

 

 

But it can also be towards the abyss of the underworld.

As is the case with the Buddhist festival called “Hungry Ghost”.

I also followed this festival for two years in Penang, precisely for my love to learn as much as possible and for fire.

The religious festival is linked to an oral tradition of the villages of Chinese and Vietnamese Taoist Buddhism, in which it is believed that the ghosts of the ancestors are allowed, during a certain period of the year, to return to the realm of the living to take everything with them. which belongs to them and has not been sufficiently offered by the relatives still alive: therefore they are represented as ghosts with long and thin necks, precisely because they are neglected by their relatives.

The “Hungry Ghosts” festival was celebrated during the seventh month of the Chinese calendar, and only by the Taoist current of Buddhism.

It is said that, during this month, the gates of hell are open again and hungry ghosts roam the city raiding all the drinks and food that their living relatives leave as offerings outside their homes near candles.

Families must also offer written prayers and paper coins called “Hell money”, or joss-paper printed to look like real coins to be used only during this festival, as money – in fact – for hell.

 

“Hungry Ghost” Festival, Sungai Dua, Penang,  MALAYSIA – 9 September 2018

The prayers and offerings go on for the whole month, until the last night when, after the prayer with the monk, the paper altar is dismantled, the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha seated on the throne, all the prayers and coins are collected in large plastic bags and piled on the road to form a large pyre waiting for midnight.

Then all the faithful in a circle drop the lighted incense on the pyre until everything explodes in a huge and powerful fire meters high.

The gates of Hell close again, for a year, with prayers for the ghosts who hopefully are no longer hungry and angry.

But return to their dark realm, in peace.

All of them stay late into the night to see the fire slowly extinguish, and close to the ground, with a truly sense of mysticism and respect.

 

“Hungry Ghost” Festival. Sungai Dua, Penang. MALAYSIA – 29 August 2019

 

I believe this is a fair conclusion to talk about fire.

From divine Olympus to the gates of Hell, but not the classic one full of screams and pain of a Christian-Islamic type, but more melancholy and poetic, with thin-necked ghosts who return to their lands with a little less heart sad to have met their relatives again in life, and obtained what was the rightful claim: memory and affection.

With fire to burn the forgetfulness of human beings.

We must not and can never forget our debt to the divine sphere, and the fire is here to remind us.

With the burnt flesh of burning coal, or with prayers flying in the night.

 

Before becoming ashes.

READ ALSO:

• Thaipusam: “My Malaysia” Photo Series (3) 
• Hang pi mana? I Go to Penang: “My Malaysia” Photo Series (8) — PART TWO 

 

“Encyclopedia of symbols” (Garzanti, 1991)
Diego Manzi: “Incanto – The divinities of India” (Le Lettere, 2019)

Italian version